On Tue, Aug 04, 2009 at 10:17:29AM -0700, Jameson Williams wrote: > It would indeed be awesome to have something like this in Portland. PLUG, > FreeGeek, and a variety of Portland's general-purpose dogooder non-profits > could team up to give Austin a run for its money -- and help more > underprivileged gain access to computing resources. ...
Free Geek has already helped thousands of "underprivileged gain access". Access is more than a free computer; there is training, maintenance, support. There is also power and connectivity. An older computer with a CRT monitor can draw 150W - powered half the time by $0.10/kWhr electricity, that's $66.00/year . Free Geek scraps the older machines, reusing only the newer and more efficient hardware. They push a lot of volume to sieve out the better stuff. Most "computer access" these days involves the internet, and ISP is expensive, hundreds of dollars a year. The Personal Telco Project is working on providing free wireless internet access to the underserved. PTP always need help. If you give away a stand-alone Linux computer, without community support, the recipient will just replace the Linux with bootleg Windows and use the machine to play computer games. So all you end up doing is providing them with an expensive addiction. Computers, even-stand alone ones, are good for much more than games, but recipients need training and support to get there. The Free Geek model, based on active recipient involvement, is much more empowering and sustainable than what the Austin folks wrote about. Their work is a nice first step. After another decade of hard work, I hope they evolve into something like Free Geek, and make a lasting contribution to their community. If you want to "help the needy get nerdy", then get involved at Free Geek. There are lots of needful tasks there, all the way from simple build-program stuff, up through training, support, and even occasional bits of programming and hardware engineering. Keith -- Keith Lofstrom [email protected] Voice (503)-520-1993 KLIC --- Keith Lofstrom Integrated Circuits --- "Your Ideas in Silicon" Design Contracting in Bipolar and CMOS - Analog, Digital, and Scan ICs _______________________________________________ PLUG mailing list [email protected] http://lists.pdxlinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug
